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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has ended NorthwesTel's monopoly of telephone service in the North.

The decision followed a review of the Whitehorse-based regional service provider's regulatory framework, and has now cleared the way for competition to enter the North's telecommunications market.

"For the first time, many northern residents will be able to choose an alternate local telephone service provider," said Leonard Katz, the CRTC's vice-chairman of telecommunications, on Wednesday.

"Competition will be introduced as soon as possible to bring choice and innovative options to Canada's North."

The commission also denied NorthwesTel's request to raise land line rates across the North by $2, stating, "NorthwesTel has insufficiently invested in its network despite its strong financial performance during the past few years," and raised concern that the company's "ageing infrastructure" is affecting the quality and reliability of its service.

"We are disappointed that NorthwesTel, which has until now been the sole provider of local telephone service in the North, has not made a greater effort to improve its services," Katz said, citing service outages in many communities and basic features not widely available to customers such as three-way calling and caller display. "Northern residents deserve to have access to reliable and high-quality services comparable to those offered in the rest of the country."

Residents in many parts of the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut will have the option to choose from competing telephone service providers as of May 1, 2012, the commission said, indicating that Yellowknife-based Internet service provider SSI Micro -- which was previously barred from competing against Northwestel despite assurances from CEO Jeff Philip that SSI was ready to launch voice services in the North -- can begin operating its own telephone service as early as spring.

The commission has ordered NorthwesTel to provide a plan detailing how it will modernize its network within the next six months, which will form the basis of a two-year comprehensive review.

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